Reading

Just finished Charlie Stross’s short story collection Toast, which I picked up at Worldcon. The front cover blurb mentions Bruce Sterling four times, which tells you right off who this is aimed at. Stross seems like part of that wave of SF writers that I haven‘t seen a name for yet, the post-cyberpunk crowd. They’ve gone past the mirrorshades and angst, and are exploring the implications of AI and transhumanism and post- or hyper-capitalism.

They’re pretty funny, too. Especially Stross. Lots of funny stuff in this collection, like the sequel to 1984 that’s set after Oceania has computerized, or the one that combines Lovecraft’s “At the Mountains of Madness” with the Iran-Contra affair.

Terrible copy-editing, though. Lots of inconsistent capitalization, and a sentence mangled beyond the point of comprehensibility.

I also went through Frank Kelly Freas’s As He Sees It which is a mixed bag. There are lots of great pieces in here, and a bunch that, well, he must have been in a hurry, or something. I certainly don’t expect every artist to be in top form 100% of the time, but I was hoping his only collection would contain his best work. There were pieces I saw hung at Noreascon4 that were much better than some of what’s in here.

I’ve just started on Michael Pollan’s The Botany of Desire, about the history of plant domestication. I’ve been meaning to read this for a while, and saw it at Barnes & Noble last week.

Workout gear

Stopped off at the Sports Authority to check out adjustable weight benches; especially to see whether the Weider Pro 125 is any more stable than it looks. None of the display models were what I was looking for. But I did see a possible indoor cardio solution: the Gazelle. I haven’t figured out what the differences are between the Edge, Freestyle, Elite, and Evolution models, other than cost and that the first has a lower user weight capacity. Looks like the Freestyle is the one for me, if I can find a place to try one out first. To make matters more confusing, Sears stocks yet another model, the Supra.

Man, those are some ugly URLs.